Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
What the pay figures show
- Alaska pays this job the most, at $69,910. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $57,034 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Alaska leads for coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders at $69,910 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $57,034 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$48,250
People doing it
158,740
Highest paid
$69,910
AK
Best off, really
$57,034
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$36,260
Highest tenth
$74,730
Lowest, really
$36,007
NY
States with data
50
National average
$52,620
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $36,007 and $57,034. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 158,740 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $48,250. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $48,250 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Alaska leads the published set.
- Interstate variation for coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $36,007 to $57,034. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- With 158,740 workers, coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders runs to 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $36,260 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $48,250 |
| Top tenth earn over | $74,730 |
| This salary | $48,250 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
The national median for this job
$48,250around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $36,260 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $48,250 |
| Top tenth | $74,730 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Coating, Painting, and Spraying Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $42,950 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $69,910 |
| Spread | $26,960 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $46,750 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $48,109 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $69,910 | $58,012 | $57,034 |
| MS | $53,170 | $42,867 | $49,108 |
| ND | $51,020 | $43,175 | $48,745 |
| WY | $50,220 | $42,532 | $46,816 |
| WA | $59,980 | $50,374 | $46,401 |
| SD | $47,980 | $40,732 | $46,236 |
| ME | $56,200 | $44,863 | $46,205 |
| IA | $49,330 | $40,554 | $45,686 |
| LA | $47,950 | $39,656 | $44,887 |
| NE | $49,340 | $40,283 | $44,573 |
| OH | $48,550 | $40,571 | $44,189 |
| AR | $46,380 | $38,189 | $44,145 |
| NJ | $58,240 | $47,306 | $43,446 |
| TN | $47,210 | $40,113 | $43,359 |
| WI | $49,170 | $40,118 | $43,092 |
| CO | $53,590 | $43,590 | $42,996 |
| SC | $48,220 | $40,043 | $42,976 |
| MT | $47,380 | $38,780 | $42,972 |
| MD | $55,510 | $44,509 | $42,812 |
| MN | $52,210 | $42,104 | $42,781 |
| MO | $47,580 | $39,112 | $42,623 |
| KY | $47,170 | $38,548 | $42,609 |
| OK | $45,780 | $37,405 | $42,368 |
| IN | $47,320 | $38,835 | $42,128 |
| NM | $45,730 | $37,925 | $41,959 |
| KS | $47,120 | $37,700 | $41,905 |
| VT | $49,360 | $40,443 | $41,852 |
| CT | $52,900 | $42,526 | $41,013 |
| ID | $45,810 | $37,414 | $40,923 |
| TX | $46,750 | $39,744 | $40,899 |
| NC | $46,730 | $38,372 | $40,761 |
| PA | $48,340 | $39,537 | $40,551 |
| UT | $47,880 | $38,521 | $40,547 |
| RI | $49,850 | $40,785 | $40,217 |
| NV | $45,750 | $38,940 | $40,153 |
| VA | $49,880 | $40,151 | $39,853 |
| AL | $44,250 | $35,844 | $39,840 |
| WV | $42,950 | $35,544 | $39,593 |
| AZ | $47,860 | $39,842 | $39,406 |
| FL | $47,860 | $40,636 | $39,280 |
| GA | $46,450 | $37,784 | $39,073 |
| NH | $48,410 | $41,077 | $38,993 |
| IL | $48,000 | $38,517 | $38,963 |
| MI | $44,670 | $36,425 | $38,674 |
| CA | $52,950 | $43,356 | $38,511 |
| HI | $51,990 | $41,444 | $38,159 |
| MA | $51,150 | $41,042 | $37,918 |
| DE | $46,120 | $37,245 | $37,525 |
| OR | $49,400 | $38,101 | $36,383 |
| NY | $48,000 | $38,753 | $36,007 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $48,250.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Alaska, at $58,012.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — New York sits at the bottom on $36,007.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $48,250, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $58,012, which leads in Alaska.
- The price deflation applied to coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is New York at $36,007. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — New York anchors the bottom at $36,007 — and the two source series are dated independently.